That’s so wonderful, Carol! Good work all around. You should be proud of yourself and I hope you are!

As a child, my parents were too emotionally pre-occupied to be particularly nurturing and supportive – particularly during my adolescence. From my mother, I developed the idea that my best way to express love was through patience, deferring my needs, and through self-sacrifice. My father worked away, and when I
attempted to share my feelings with my mother, I was actually teased and ridiculed. In retrospect, my family was experiencing significant financial trouble at the time, that was kept from us kids (ostensibly to protect us) and I am sure that the magnitudes of my teenaged angst seemed petty, at the time, in comparison – but the impression made felt permanent.

I was lucky, in one respect: I experienced love as a source of emotional support, from my grandmother.

Anyway, I grew up thinking that the way to express love was through acts of patience, overlooking transgressions, and doing nice things for the people in my life, but not expecting much from others, accepting impassivity (or the absence of complaint) as approval.

People who expressed their love emotionally, potential partners who ‘led with their hearts’, freaked me out – I didn’t know how handle them. I missed out on a lot of life as a result of a lack of confidence in emotional expression.

Eventually, I sought therapy, and got to the point where I met someone, we got married, and had a child.

It’s not perfect, but we try to make it work. What I have found, and what led me your work, was this renewed sense of love, particularly as a parent, expressed as acts of patience, but my son, as a child gives and receives love in terms of emotions. I take care to make sure that he ‘feels’ loved, but I lack confidence that he does indeed feel it – particularly when he acts in ways that are different to my expression of love – acting impatiently, or making excessive demands for my time or attention and I begin to feel frustrated and resentful.

In those instances, I suspect that he knows he’s loved, but may not really feel it. Not like when we share happier times, and we share a sense of joy with each other.

Dear Cathy, you should be so very proud of yourself. You have stopped the CEN with your own generation and your son and daughter in law and granddaughter are the reward. I hope you will focus on nurturing yourself, self-care and seeking joy. You deserve all of it.

Every time I read your posts, they resonate with me so clearly. I had cen and I married a man with cen. He struggles with ptsd and alcohol addiction and I have struggled but thankfully am now recovering from codependency. Your insights go along so well with what I need to do for codependency recovery, namely identifying and owning my feelings, preferences and opinions.

Dear Anna, feelings are physical and they are your body’s responses. And they can have a profound impact, for sure. Thanks for your comment!

You are welcome, Taylor!